Your Blogging Staff

Contributing to this blog:
- "Dave" is Dave Barry, who is a humor columnist and presidential contender.
- "judi" is Judi Smith, who is Dave's Research Department, as well as being interested in men.
- "Walter" is Walter, a bone from the penis of a walrus.

Sorry, judi, but I'm on Metro's side. IE6 is a disaster from a security standpoint, and the faster people move to a newer browser, the better.
IE 8 is solid, I love Firefox, and Chrome's pretty groovy. Opera blows, however, and so does the Windows version of Safari.

Depending on your tastes, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome are all great picks. Internet Explorer is not worth the security risks, and if you update to version 7 or 8, the interface changes entirely, making it even more frustrating.

JoG - That is distressing. Having read almost all of the Spenser novels and starting on the Appaloosa series and a little Jesse Stone, and his Chandler completions, I'm sorry to hear there will be no more. Fortunately, he has left a prodigious collection. Plenty left to read.

Pah! The Metro! You can’t get on a train or bus in this country without finding one of their soggy newspapers waiting for you in your seat, usually already thumbed by some damp commuter before a tramp has used it to sanitise himself.

Coincidentally, I just pointed out to our corporate help desk how unfortunate and unsafe it was that we were still on IE 6. They replied that some corporate web sites required it (!) and they were beating on the 3rd-party developers to fix that. The embarrassing bit is that we consult and develop in a lot of areas, including web site development...

Me, I use Firefox, with the indispensable IETab extension for such misbehaving sites.

Just to add to the chorus - yeah, you need to upgrade. Notice they don't care what you upgrade to (so they offer you all the choices), as long as you're not on IE6 anymore. Soon web pages just won't work on it.

be that (ALL) as it may, isn't it up to me what freaking browser i choose to use? they won't let me SEE any stories without upgrading? why is it ANY of their business?

i use firefox almost all the time, but when i click on links from herald webmail, IE opens. and it's NOT ANYONE'S BUSINESS BUT MINE. i don't want to upgrade IE. i just want to use firefox. and it's NOT ANYONE'S BUSINESS BUT MINE. certainly not a freaking news-ish website.

Along with security problems, IE6, in an attempt to rule the internet, tried to use its popularity to force the internet to use a different set of commands that was more convenient for Microsoft programmers. It didn't work, and now, for sites to show on IE6, web designers have to program two pages - one for IE6, and one for everybody else.

So they're about to tell IE6 users to suck on it. It's not that they won't LET you, it's just that they don't want to do twice as much work so that users can use an outdated browser. Kind of reasonably, actually.

well, gfunksizzle, yes that is reasonable... and if i were to go to their website and NOT SEE THE STORY because they didn't do that extra work, then that would be my own fault, and my decision as to whether or not to use a different browser to see it, right?

don't get me wrong; posting a notice on the page somewhere (that they plan to discontinue use of IE6) would be fine, and even appreciated. even doing this but allowing me to see it after i refresh the page would be okay. but preventing me from seeing it entirely? what am i missing here? what's the point in covering the story completely, and refusing to allow me to SEE it, no matter how many times i hit 'refresh,' when it is clearly under there and i could see if they would just stop blocking it with their stupid warning?

You don't need to install Firefox to use it. Go to http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable/ (or google for "mozilla firefox, portable edition" and follow the first link) and download Firefox from there. If you then run it, it will create a folder and put all the browser files within it.

You can then run Firefox from this folder, or copy this folder anywhere (say onto a USB stick), and run Firefox directly from there -- no install required.

That said, Judi does have a point -- showing her the content and then telling her to sod off because she doesn't have the 'right' browser is just plain stupid.

Judi: The best thing to do is probably to speak to IT about this, because visiting all sorts of websites is probably part of your job -- and upgrading is going to make life a lot easier as more and more websites stop supporting IE6. Most of your IT department is probably already using Firefox or Chrome anyway, so they should at least be sympathetic.

Stopie6 is right. I run Firefox off of my stick (at work too), and it has several advantages--no IE6 problems, I can browse on anyone's computer without seeing their internet links/info, and I can take all of my bookmarks with me. I recommend this highly.

I agree Suzy Q. Judi, if you don't upgrade though, that rag may print some horrible story about you and some guy in a kilt running through London doing naughty things. Can you down grade back to IE 6 just to go on that site and tell them no a few times?

judi: you say "... when i click on links from herald webmail, IE opens...." It sounds like you have to change your browser preferences, either in the webmail, or under Internet Options in the control panel. You should be able to have links open any browser you like.

As Ralph says, you (generically) can change the default browser on the computer so that clicking a link in email launches what you want. It's possible, though, that Judi's IT folks have restricted her ability to do this. Certainly worth a try, though.

Specifically in the case of IE6, I can sympathize with a site's desire to avoid the extra work of ensuring their site displays properly in IE6; but you'd think a big news site would just suck it up and do it. If the pages would have been ok (if not perfect), and they're just being difficult, that's another matter entirely.

By reminding you to update your browser, they are actually doing you a favor.

Old versions of IE have security issues. They allow malicious people (aka, criminals) to place software into your computer. If you later use that same computer for anything involving money (like shopping, paying bills, banking, or quicken/accounting), the criminal gets your account information. Then, your bank balance goes down, or your credit card balance goes up, all by itself. You might even end up with an extra mortgage on your house.

If you value your money or your credit, you really need to stop using old browsers. Getting new versions is easy, unless you are in a locked-down corporate machine. Even in a corporate machine, convincing the corporate security pinheads to close a security hole is usually easy. Most of them take security rather seriously.

The only potential issue is if your corporate intranet site is old, and only works with IE6. Then you might need to use IE6 to access it. In that case, you should install some other browser, such as Firefox, to use with other web sites.

Been out sick for a while and haven't had a chance to catch up, but felt even worse when I heard that Robert B. Parker had passed. I named my son after Spenser. Coincidentally, I am reading his last book (published) on Kindle and it wasn't dedicated to Joan. What love stories that man wrote... Was just beginning to love the Jesse Stone books and movies, too. RIP favorite author... BTW, I met him about 11 years ago at the St. Pete Times Reading Festival. He said that he would have preferred seeing someone like Nick Nolte play Spenser; he didn't much like Robert Urich. I 'bout fell over dead myself with that one!